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More and more people are looking to sell gold and the media has noticed. In one city, a news station aired radio ads to draw attention to their special report on what they were calling the “new gold rush.”

Another station quoted an expert who said that in the past there has been a tendency for gold prices to be an estimated 15 times the price of oil. Well, we all know what has happened to the price of oil. It has skyrocketed in recent months and everyone has felt the pinch at the gas pump.

If the relationship between the price of gold and the price of oil that the expert noted holds true, then that means that when gas prices go up, it is a good time to sell your gold. Just remember that the prices you will find quoted for an ounce of gold pertain to pure gold. So if you have jewelry that is 24 karat gold, you can expect to reap the most benefit from the surge in the price of gold.

If your jewelry is less than 24 karat gold, you can still sell your gold and earn a profit. Just remember that gold that is less than 24 karats will not command as high a price as 24 karat gold.

You can put your gold jewelry to work for you, rather than leaving it sitting in a jewelry box unworn and unused. Consider selling it, especially since the price of gold is higher now than it has been in the recent past.

As we have mentioned before, gold has been recycled since ancient times. Gold is used over and over again. It is entirely possible that the gold jewelry you have in your home was once also at home with Incan kings, European royalty, the Pharaohs of Egypt, or one of Asia’s rulers of antiquity.

When you decide to sell your gold you are participating in time-honored tradition. You never know where your gold has been and you never know where it will end up. As you know, gold is not just used for gold jewelry, but it can be used in an infinite number of products.

Gold in the bathroom

Gold has been used for wash basins and other bathroom fixtures such as faucets. Some people have gold light fixtures in their bathrooms, even gold toilet paper holders. It has also been used in shower curtains. In fact, one former CEO was reputed to have has a gold-threaded shower curtain with an estimated value of $6000.

Gold in the kitchen

Gold has been used in coffee pots and other kitchen appliances. Gold has also been used in foodstuffs. Thin layers of gold have been placed onto chocolate by a famous French pastry chef. Some ancient Egyptians believed that ingesting gold powder might aid them in achieving immortality.

Gold is not exactly a fountain of youth, but is something that can be used over and over. If you have unused gold jewelry or coins, you may want to give it new purpose by selling your gold.

In an earlier post about determining gold worth, it was mentioned that as a consumer, you really cannot determine how much gold is in a piece of gold jewelry. Now let’s talk a little more about how gold content is measured. You’ll have a better appreciation of what a gold buyer does.

Measuring gold content or the ‘fineness’ of a piece of gold jewelry is called assaying. There are several methods to do this and the one chosen will depend on how accurate the measurement needs to be. How soon the measurement is needed also determines the assaying method chosen, since some methods take longer than others. Here is information on two assaying methods:

Trial by Fire
This is a highly accurate way to determine the gold content of jewelry. After scraping a small sample of the gold and weighing it, the jeweler will place the gold in lead foil with silver. Placing it in a furnace at a very high temperature will get rid of any base metals. The silver and gold alloy that is left is then put into nitric acid (this is called parting).With the silver gone, the result is pure gold. At the end of this process, the gold is weighed again.

Trial by Touchstone
This assaying method dates back to ancient times and it not as accurate as the fire assaying method. The tester will make a rubbing of the gold jewelry on a special touchstone that already had rubbings of reference samples. Then the touchstone is treated with acids. The color of the treated areas are compared to see how the gold jewelry rubbing looks next to the rubbings of the samples. This method is actually good for trying to see if one gold piece has karats that it is reputed to have, but it doesn’t always work well with white gold.

Yesterday was Earth Day and many people have recycling on their minds. When people think of recycling they do not think of something like gold, but gold recycling has been going on since ancient times. The gold industry has made efficient use of its product by re-purposing it and putting it back into the market. Gold is not something that is used once and then thrown away.

About two-thirds of the world’s gold supply comes from mining; the rest of the gold the world uses for jewelry, coins and other items comes from recycled gold. Of course the recycled gold was mined once, but saying it has been recycled distinguishes it from gold that had recently been taken from the Earth.

Gold is truly an international product that connects people all over the world. Your jewelry box may be the home of gold that has been shaped into something ornamental, but there is no way to tell exactly where that gold came from. And when you sell your gold, you are putting that gold back into circulation and it may travel the world and back once again.

While it is not possible to know exactly where your gold jewelry was mined, it is sometimes possible to find out where it was manufactured. Some countries require that gold be hallmarked. Hallmarking means that gold jewelry is marked with symbols that give information on where it was manufactured, as well as information about karats. There are countries with no hallmarking requirements at all and others that have very detailed hallmarking standards.

We’ve talked about gold purity and how jewelry with the purest gold attracts the highest price. Twenty-four karat gold will sell for more than gold of lesser karat purity, like 18 karat, 14 karat or even 9 karat gold.

So now that we’ve talked quality, let’s talk quantity. You already know that as a consumer you can get a sense of your gold’s value by checking to see how pure the gold is. But did you know that you cannot estimate how much gold is contained in a piece of gold jewelry? That’s right. The actual amount of gold used in a piece of jewelry cannot be determined by karat.

When gold prices are low and manufacturers pay less for gold, they tend to put more gold into each piece. However, when gold costs manufacturers more, they put less gold into each piece of jewelry that they make. People who make and sell jewelry don’t want to raise prices so much that consumers shun the product so they adjust manufacturing techniques accordingly.

Jewelry is not a staple item, like food, so manufacturers and retailers feel the need to keep the prices close to customer expectations because they want you to make this luxury purchase.

There have been times when the price of gold was really high and people everywhere were selling. If you get wind of the price of gold going up, you’ll want to gather your gold jewelry to sell it before everyone else does and the price goes down.

If the price of gold gets really high, you will want to sell your gold no matter what because you will be very well compensated whether your jewelry contains a lot or a little gold.

If you are wondering what happens to your gold after you sell it to a gold buyer who intends to melt it down (if it is pure gold) or extract the gold from it (if the gold is mixed with other metals), here is a little information on some of the processes used.

Blast Furnace/Electric Furnace Smelting

In this method, oxygenated air is blown into a furnace and the contents of the furnace are heated. The reactions that take place as a result of this form distinct materials. One of these is slag, which can be reused or disposed of as it is not of high value.

The gold that first emerges as a result of putting metals into a blast furnace is not pure gold. It has to be refined even further.

Molten Chlorination

In this process, metal is melted and clay pipes are used to pass chlorine gas into the the metal. First, the silver and base metals that are present are removed. They are on the surface of the melted gold and have to be taken away to further refine the gold. After these metals are removed, the gold goes through further chlorination until it is truly refined.

As you can see it takes a lot of work and refining to get to the gold itself. This is why jewelry and coins that contain the most gold sell for higher prices that objects that contain lesser percentages of gold.

When you take your gold jewelry to a gold buyer, this person has to consider the work it will take to get the gold from the jewelry. They do not simply melt it in a pan on a stove. The process involves time, effort and various chemical compounds. A gold buyer is not looking at the ornamental or sentimental value of the jewelry; this person is considering what will go into getting the pure gold from each piece of gold that you offer for sale.

When you consider how to get the most value for your gold jewelry, it may occur to you that you can pawn the gold rather than sell it. You should know that pawning will not bring you the same amount of money that selling your gold will. If you are willing to part with some of your gold jewelry, then it is a better idea to go ahead and sell it.

A gold buyer is willing to pay you for the gold itself. When you turn something over to a pawn shop, that shop is not actually paying you for the full value of the jewelry. They are not interested in extracting the gold from the jewelry, so the pawn shop does not have to really consider the jewelry’s full worth. Instead, they will give you a percentage of the jewelry’s full value while you let them “borrow” it with the idea that you will return for your property. If for some reason you forget or don’t return, then the pawn shop is free to sell the jewelry. At that time, the pawn shop may consider what the jewelry is really worth because now they stand to make a profit from it.

It really is risky to leave your gold jewelry at a pawn shop. You may forget that it is there. You may lose the claim ticket that proves that the jewelry belongs to you. Some people retain the ticket and remember the jewelry, but something prevents them from getting back to the pawn shop in the allotted amount of time and they lose possession of their gold.
Rather than let a pawn shop hold onto your jewelry and run the risk of forgetting that it is there, why not sell your gold jewelry yourself? That way you can reap the benefits of having it appraised for its full value and being compensated for what your gold is worth.

While you may not be able to look at a piece of gold jewelry and estimate its selling price, you can approach the sale of your gold with an idea of how valuable your gold is. Most gold jewelry has information about its gold content marked on it somewhere. The inscription is usually rather small. It could be on the inside of a ring or on the clasp of a gold chain.

It is not the size of the gold piece that really matters, but the amount of gold in it. So, it is possible that a very large piece of jewelry that contains gold mixed with a lot of other metals will not sell at the same price point as a small piece of gold jewelry that is pure gold. Gold jewelry is not priced based on its size. It is priced according to the amount of gold it contains.

The inscription you see on your gold jewelry will let you know if a piece is pure gold or how close that piece of jewelry is to being pure gold. Twenty-four karat (24K) gold is pure gold. Similar gold pieces of lesser karat content (14K or 9K, for instance) will not be worth as much as a piece of gold jewelry that is 24K. Gold pieces are labeled so that it is clear just how much gold they actually contain.

People who buy gold are looking for gold only and are willing to pay for that metal alone. When a piece of gold is not solid gold, other metals are present.

If you consider gold content in terms of percentages:

24K gold is 100% gold;

18K gold is 75% gold; and

14K gold is about 58% gold.

As long as they have the same amount of karats, different types of gold will have the same proportion of pure gold. However, there are variations in tone and color between different karats of the same color gold.

That is to say that while a piece of 18 karat yellow gold jewelry and a piece of 18 karat white gold jewelry both contain the same amount of pure gold, pieces of yellow gold of different karats are not equal. Something that is 18 karat yellow gold and something that is  24 karat yellow gold will not look exactly the same.

For example, 9 karat yellow gold will not appear to be as yellow as 18 karat yellow gold. The 18 karat yellow gold will appear richer in color. For this reason, 18 karat gold is selected more often that 9 karat gold when people purchase engagement rings. Also, 18 karat gold often lasts longer than 9 karat gold. So that is another reason why it is sometimes preferred to 9 karat gold when it comes to selecting rings and other jewelry that people expect to wear often.

In the case of white gold, 9 karat and 18 karat both have a similar color. In general, white gold is more expensive that yellow gold or rose gold. Rose gold and yellow gold usually are priced similarly.

The things that you as a consumer consider when you buy your gold are some of the same things that come under consideration when it is time to sell your gold. Gold that has stood up well to everyday wear will sell at a different price point than gold that has not stood up to the test of time. The color differences between the different types of gold plays a role in pricing as well. And lastly, the amount of pure gold in a piece will also determine its price when it is time to sell.

There are so many different types of gold jewelry and our last post went over gold purity, gold plating and overlays. As you choose gold jewelry you want to sell, knowledge about different types of gold is invaluable.

Gold also comes in quite a few different colors. The color of gold that is the most well known and the one you see more of than anything else is yellow gold. Other colors of gold that are popular are white gold and rose gold. Many people are not aware of this, but it is also possible to obtain gold in colors like bronze gold, red gold and lime gold as well.

The different colors of gold are not made the same way, but they do not have to stand alone. Jewelers can make gold pieces that combine more than one color of gold. When different colors of gold are combined, the end result is described as two-tone, three-tone, tri-colored or multi-colored gold.

Although they do not have the same hue, the same methods and units of measurement are used to label the gold content of the various colors of gold. Therefore, a piece of rose gold jewelry that is labeled as 18 karat gold will have the same amount of pure gold as a piece of yellow gold jewelry that is 18 karate gold.

The metals used in the alloy mix are what give these different types of gold their distinctive colors.

When copper and zinc are used as alloy metals with pure gold, yellow gold is formed.

Copper alloys are also used to make rose gold, although the mix is such that the gold has a reddish tint to it. The combination of pure gold with white metals like palladium and silver are what make white gold.

There was a time when nickel was included in the alloy mix of white gold, and depending on the age of your white gold jewelry, it may contain nickel. The use of nickel was discontinued because it causes an allergic reaction in a number of people.

All of this is good to know so when you prepare to sell your gold, you will know more about what it contains. Check this blog to read more about the value of different types of gold.